7zip
7-zip Compression Settings Guide
Digital Studio 7
This guide is created to help 7-zip users understand what settings do what and how to achieve best compression on their systems, for this guide I am using 7-zip gui however I believe reading this guide will help you with commend line version as well.
For this guide I am using 7-zip version 9.32
Lets Begine:
1) Archive Format: From this option you can select what archive format you want to use, however because this guide is dedicated to 7z lets stick to it. although I recommend you take a look at this article Best File Compression Method article.
2) Compression Level: This are presets for the settings, the names are pretty self explanatory, the presets start from Store (This preset compression settings can not be edited because it does not compress files) to Ultra (ultra is the highest compression preset, but we can achieve better compression by manually editing settings)
Take a look at this table to understand better (source)
Value
Description
Store
No compression is used, files are just stored in archive in its original size.
Fast
Fast compression.
Normal
Recommended level of compression.
Maximum
Better compression, but it is slower and needs more memory.
Ultra
Best compression, but it is even slower and needs even more memory.
3) Compression Method: Here You can select the compression method, I recommend using lzma2 because it is considered generally as the best compression method, It is always good idea to default to it.
Take a look at this for more information (source)
Method
Description
LZMA
Default compression method of 7z format. It provides high compression ratio and very fast decompression.
LZMA2
LZMA-based compression method. It provides better multithreading support than LZMA. But compression ratio can be worse in some cases. For best
compression ratio with LZMA2 use 1 or 2 CPU threads. If you use LZMA2 with more
Digital Studio 7
This guide is created to help 7-zip users understand what settings do what and how to achieve best compression on their systems, for this guide I am using 7-zip gui however I believe reading this guide will help you with commend line version as well.
For this guide I am using 7-zip version 9.32
Lets Begine:
1) Archive Format: From this option you can select what archive format you want to use, however because this guide is dedicated to 7z lets stick to it. although I recommend you take a look at this article Best File Compression Method article.
2) Compression Level: This are presets for the settings, the names are pretty self explanatory, the presets start from Store (This preset compression settings can not be edited because it does not compress files) to Ultra (ultra is the highest compression preset, but we can achieve better compression by manually editing settings)
Take a look at this table to understand better (source)
Value
Description
Store
No compression is used, files are just stored in archive in its original size.
Fast
Fast compression.
Normal
Recommended level of compression.
Maximum
Better compression, but it is slower and needs more memory.
Ultra
Best compression, but it is even slower and needs even more memory.
3) Compression Method: Here You can select the compression method, I recommend using lzma2 because it is considered generally as the best compression method, It is always good idea to default to it.
Take a look at this for more information (source)
Method
Description
LZMA
Default compression method of 7z format. It provides high compression ratio and very fast decompression.
LZMA2
LZMA-based compression method. It provides better multithreading support than LZMA. But compression ratio can be worse in some cases. For best
compression ratio with LZMA2 use 1 or 2 CPU threads. If you use LZMA2 with more